As you know, I have my wallet back in my possession. Despite my earlier statements that I’m purchasing some sort of device that will aid me in it’s recovery when it goes missing, after giving my vehement thanks to whatever gods there may be, I’ve pretty much gone back to normal in it’s regard.

When I first got it back, the lady who handed it to me said casually, “I broke your zipper, I’m afraid..” and I had a brief moment of heart palpitation as I took it from her and quickly inspected it. My mom bought me this wallet from Nordstrom probably over 10 years ago, and no other wallet has ever fit so perfectly into my hand and my lifestyle as well. In short, I LOVE this wallet, and whenever it goes missing, my first lament after the fact that, you know, all my money-getting-cards and info are now in the hands of who knows who, is that it is the PERFECT WALLET, and NOW IT’S GONE, WAAAAHHHH!

Now, I say that it’s perfect, but technically, this is not true. “Perfect” denotes that it is without any flaws or imperfections. That I find absolutely no fault with it. And sadly, I do have one minor complaint that makes it a teeny tiny bit less than perfect – it zips up from the wrong side. It really is a minor thing, and one would wonder how any “side” could be the “wrong” side to zip up from, but all I know is when I pick it up and unzip it I always then have to turn it around to get at the money/cards slots thing. Always. Unzip, flip. It’s always on the wrong side. It’s the way I unzip. But as you now know, this really is a petty little complaint. I love my wallet, love love love it. Even though it isn’t truly correct to say so, it’s perfect and none other have ever suited me as much as this one.

So the thought of the zipper being broken really did grab my heart with the icy grip of fear. Oh my god! What would I do if this wallet had finally gone kaput?! Even before the soft black leather touched my skin I had run through all the possible scenarios how bad it could be and even if it really was broken, I could always have the zipper replaced (and they could put it in the opposite way too!).. I checked it out and saw that the zipper was fine, though some bits of paper from a receipt had gotten zipped into the threads and had caused it to pucker open. This has happened to me countless times (because I keep way too much shit in my wallet) and is easily remedied. You merely grab the zipper handle thingee and yank it over the caught paper really hard. Then pick out the paper bits and zip it up normally. Relief. My wallet was fine. Oh happy day! Oh, and of course, it was found and not lost and all that jazz, yadda yadda yadda.

As I mentioned, after the initial elation, I have largely forgotten about my wallet. Today, I took a moment to open it up, sort through all the receipts and paper bits therein and toss anything that needed tossing. While I had everything out, I careful looked at the zipper, and seeing there were still itty bitty paper bits stuck in the zipper, unzipped it as far as it could go and picked them all out. For the first time in 10 years, I realized that while the zipper is sewed quite firmly to the wallet .. the end isn’t sewed down to anything. THe wallet makers simply stuck the extra 2 inches of zipper length into a (non-sewed shut) opening in the middle where the zipper begun on one side, and ended on the other. I pulled the end of the zipper out and contemplated. I pulled the other end out and pondered some more.

Could this be this easy? To just switch the zipper head thingee (what ARE those things called??) around and have it go the other way? After ten years I could have the PERFECT WALLET in 1 minute of work? What if after I pulled the zipper head thingee off, I couldn’t get it back on the zipper again? I did a little testing and then tossed in the towel and just did it.

Now my zipper zips up the opposite way. Now when I unzip it, the correct side (with the money and the cards) is facing me and I don’t have to flip it around.

I truly have THE PERFECT WALLET!!!

Now that this has been accomplished, I REALLY don’t want to lose it. So I wrote a little message on the back of my business card to any would-be-finder of the wallet.

And I put it where I think it’ll be seen. After they dig through all the receipts that I’m sure will be occupying the center space.

I should still look into wallet finder thingees though.